Which part of the article do you believe the scandal is? Please describe it in your own words.Originally Posted by RandBlade
Which part of the article do you believe the scandal is? Please describe it in your own words.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
The delay and dithering and letting a continent squander opportunities to get a vaccine for political reasons.
From Google Translate: According to BILD information, the four ministers already had massive doubts in June 2020 that the EU would be able to procure enough vaccine in time, but were urged by their respective heads of government - in Germany by Chancellor Angela Merkel - to initiate the procedure Ursula von der Leyen to transfer.
Rank incompetence.
On another subject this was a very good article: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...-anti-science- by the Editor of Vaccines in Practice and a former chair of the British Medical Association's public health medicine committee.
Nothing in the article substantiates the claim that problems that have arisen can be attributed to the letter or the decision. It's not unreasonable a priori, but the article doesn't do anything to support the claim, or show that the alternative approach would've been better. Nor are most EU nations constrained by vaccine supply atm. You can read the article in English here: https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/...6986.bild.html
Respectfully, he's mischaracterizing the debate, as well as misrepresenting some aspects of science & practice.On another subject this was a very good article: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...-anti-science- by the Editor of Vaccines in Practice and a former chair of the British Medical Association's public health medicine committee.
For example, re. off-label use, it is rare to use a substance off-label—on a large scale, at that—unless there is substantial experience with using it in that manner, often from studies conducted after approval; in this case, we're talking about new vaccines—indeed, new types of vaccines—against a novel illness, so nobody can be said to have any substantial experience with the equivalent of off-label use.
He's also misrepresenting the issue somewhat. We have a great deal of knowledge about eg. influenza, influenza vaccines and even influenza pandemics, but, even with influenza, the optimum strategy in a situation similar to the present one can't be determined from basic principles alone without epidemiological simulations of different strategies under different assumptions & scenarios.
The claims re. primary response of the Pfizer vaccine completely misrepresent the data by glossing over the very high uncertainty of those estimates.
The response to the hypothetical risk of unfavorable selection ignores the fact that we have next to no relevant experience with any even remotely similar situations (a pandemic) as far as that hypothetical risk is concerned.
The argument re. the benefits of delayed vaccination—resulting in a better quality immune response—does not take into account risk of exposure & illness during the interval between doses.
Almost all the research demonstrating possible benefits of heterologous boosting approaches has been conducted on animal models, focusing on lab parameters, and frequently for experimental vaccine candidates that are not in clinical use; there is little applicable data on clinical outcomes in humans.
Finally, he begs the question, by suggesting that the alternatives are to save lives by taking an approach not currently supported by evidence—or lose more people by only taking the approach supported by available evidence; in reality, there are other alternatives—such as losing more people by taking an approach not supported by evidence, or saving them by taking the approach supported by evidence. The question is whether the UK outbreak is such that a breadth-first strategy is preferable to adequately vaccinating the highest risk groups as quickly as possible. You can answer that question in a variety of ways, but not simply from basic principles—you can and must show the work.
Last edited by Aimless; 01-05-2021 at 09:47 AM.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Deaths per million (last 7 days)
Lithuania 134.2
Slovenia 99.62
Croatia 81.87
Slovakia 80.31
Czechia 75.73
Hungary 74
Bulgaria 61.21
United Kingdom¹ 58.5
Panama 58.4
Bosnia and Herzegovina 57.26
Eswatini 55.74
Latvia 53.33
Poland 51.93
USA¹ 50.74
Georgia 49.73
Italy 49.12
Moldova 48.16
Switzerland 44.9
Austria 44.27
Germany 43.86
Sweden 43.56
Portugal 42.94
South Africa 42.79
Belgium 40.67
Dude, the trash paper BILD is regularly spelled as "BLÖD" (i.e. "stupid") for a reason: They're full of wannabe demagogues and liars. Relying on anything they say is foolishness. It's tabloid trash.
There's even a song by Die Ärzte (a famous German punk band) which summarizes them as "Fear, hate, tits and the weather report" because that's all they are.
According to people who worked there, they're using terms like "shoot this guy" or "let's destroy that bitch" regularly in internal meetings. Their executive editor sees himself as someone who makes politics instead of reporting about it. That should tell you all you need to know.
Last edited by Khendraja'aro; 01-05-2021 at 11:42 AM.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
The US jumped 7 spots since you last posted this bullshit in this thread.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
The US is 11th for deaths per million over the past 7 days. Knocking on Germany's door. How long before we break into the top 10?
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Republicans are so desperate to keep colleges open that they're making professors "critical infrastructure" in most of the states here. Which puts me in category 1B for the vaccine, I believe (after nursing homes and health care personnel). When you add the ridiculously high rate of refusal from the nurses down here, I might get this sooner rather than later.
Hope is the denial of reality
Well, you are critical, soRepublicans are so desperate to keep colleges open that they're making professors "critical infrastructure" in most of the states here. Which puts me in category 1B for the vaccine, I believe (after nursing homes and health care personnel). When you add the ridiculously high rate of refusal from the nurses down here, I might get this sooner rather than later.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Hope is the denial of reality
Shooting the messenger rather than addressing the point Khen?
Interesting Telegraph columnists perspective on Europe's vaccine catastrophe: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business...-shook-europe/
He refers to Die Welt and Der Spiegel, are they more to your liking or are they untouchable too?
This is going to be the true story of the first half of this year.
When the "messenger" is a pathological liar and fundamentally untrustworthy, then, yes. Furthermore, "Die Welt" is an equically despicable paper, just with a tad more civilized paint (one of their lead writers openly caters to Nazi wannabes. Not a joke). It's from the same publisher after all.
Also, do you know the best way to get someone to swallow a lie? Simply state several true things and then add one lie into it. That's how they do it and that's why you should not trust anything those asshats say.
And our chief virologist (Drosten) (who's completely independend from politics) has stated that hindsight is 20/20 and that criticism after the fact in this case is stupid. Published in DER SPIEGEL, by the way.
Of course you can always play the armchair general with what we know now. But, as Drosten said, a true revision of the fact would necessitate look at what we knew then.
But I'm sure that a genius like you knew months in advance which of the more than 20 potential vaccines would be the successful ones?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
No we didn't know which ones would be successful months in advance.
What we did know though is the pandemic is costing us billions of pounds or euros per week.
Our government backed every leading horse and got orders in early paying early to be at the front of the queue. Not just one queue but almost every queue they could. They didn't back one horse, they backed virtually all of them. It therefore didn't matter which vaccine worked, we would have it.
Buying 40 million doses at £25 each costs £1bn. Given the pandemic is costing billions per week, if we can end the pandemic days, weeks or months earlier then that is money very well spent.
We have hundreds of millions of doses on order. Enough to vaccinate the whole population 5 times each approximately. That won't be needed, once we have vaccinated everyone here we can use the rest for foreign aid to help other countries get over it. Or bin those that don't work but still money well spent.
Fiddling around umming and ahhing while the pandemic rages while trying to save pennies per dose but ending at the back of the queue is really fiddling while Rome burns.
And yet your government still feels the need to delay the 2nd dose massively. Your logic does not square.
I have the statement of an expert in his field about this. And we have an armchair general's (you) opinion about this, who fell for the hateful propaganda of a rag paper.
Guess which one I'll go with.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Of course it squares. They're not all available today.
It is about getting as many people vaccinated as soon as possible by any means at any cost. It is a value judgement and when the alternative is restrictions costs £6bn per week it is absolutely necessary.
To quibble over which vaccine to buy is a false economy. No hindsight necessary.
This article has the same problem as the other one you posted.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Twitter Link
Good start. Daily vaccination updates coming from Monday.
Because words matter, is that full vaccination or half vaccination? I assume it's half.
Either way, and putting the pedant aside, that's great news and the speed at which we're doing it is super dooper. I just wish I had more confidence that they're not going to fuck it up. Because I think this cabinet have the sense and credibility of a chunk of bum fluff, I'm worried that something really, really important is being sacrificed in order to expedite the rollout.
Until said otherwise I'd assume single vaccination not double vaccinated yes.
What's being sacrificed is billions of pounds extra were spent to buy all the vaccines in advance. But the pandemic costs 6 billion per week so one week pays for the vaccine programmes.
Let's hope it's just that. The problem I have is that I think Johnson is more concerned about being first, and showing the UK is number 1, as opposed to safely and robustly vaccinating us.
I'm not suggesting the current approach isn't safe (because I genuinely don't know) and I understand why we're delaying the second jab. It's just a cynical hunch i can't shake.
What you're feeling is probably the understandable concern that the goal of this strategy is to justify loosening restrictions sooner—which, with this govt's track record, may well mean "prematurely".
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Yarp, probably. Although I think we probably ended the first "lockdown" at about the right time. Started it too late and made a mess of the subsequent ones, but when you've got libertarian Tory back benchers and Nigel Farage on your back needs must.
If you hate yourself, please enjoy this complimentary thread:
Twitter Link
The future of the Republican party
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Another major issue I don't feel gets enough coverage was and is the extent to which the test and trace is just not working as well as it needs to.
The premise of opening up the country was ostensibly that we had this, air quotes, "world beating" test and trace system which would mean only those who'd been exposed would need to isolate and everyone else could have something resembling normality. This is a system that seems to have worked well in places like South Korea.
Well, spoilers, we do not have a world beating test and trace system.
According to data from https://covid.i-sense.org.uk/ it was reaching only 32% of contacts of infected peopled in late November, and even that miserable total was their best result, their historical data goes as low as 13% in August and generally hovers around the 20% mark. For the majority of the pandemic you can only count on about 1 in 5 infected people having their contacts traced. According to Sage, the number needs to be more like 80%, 4/5.
If I'm reading the data right, the major bottle neck seems to be testing, they generally only seem to get a positive test for half to a third of infections. One cause of this is that you are actively discouraged from getting a test if you do not have symptoms. The thing explicitly tells you not to book a test unless you have symptoms, my boss said he lied to the thing over Christmas to get a test after he'd been in contact with someone who was infected but he didn't have symptoms. This goes back to the time they boasted about how many tests they had available, then the system got overwhelmed and ole Twat Hancock decided to blame people booking tests when they had no symptoms, seemingly forgetting or not caring that asymptomatic transmission is a thing.
Also the app requires bluetooth and a modern smart phone, so that's fucking stupid. I hope no one with a Xperia A4 or Moto XT1097 gets the Coronavirus, you dumb fucks!
So basically, they had this policy that was betting 10s of thousands of lives that they could do this one thing.
They could not do this one thing.
And once it became clear they could not do the thing, they continued to do the policy.
Last edited by Steely Glint; 01-05-2021 at 09:22 PM.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Think a major problem is implied by your framing—they bet big, but didn't properly hedge that bet. Even under the best circumstances, the usefulness of testing and tracing will be constrained by eg. coverage, compliance, false negatives, etc. You can mitigate those problems by maintaining policies that reduce risk of transmission—restrictions on large gatherings, recommendations to work from home if possible, mandate online teaching for unis, mandate the use of face masks, implement longer quarantine and consider quarantining entire household if someone tests positive, etc (difficult to say precisely which combination of interventions are the best, but no doubt every country can compose a menu that's palatable to its people). But that's a tough sell when you've already sold the public on a "yay return to normal" pipe dream, as Johnson, Sunak and others had. See eg. previous discussions in this thread in conjunction with worrying developments in several regions in England, the decisions about unis, etc. Most people are not keen on a "life is still shit" narrative—they want a narrative that offers a sense of freedom and control.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I suspect the true reason for the test and trace system was to be able to say they had a test and trace system, so they could open the country up.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Test & Trace here was a joke.
I had an alert two months ago. I opened up the app from the alert. The information on what the alert was supposed to be indicating was missing entirely. I came out of the app, went back in to try to reload the alert, and it crashed.
My sister who is a deputy head of an inner-city primary school in London had to disable the app along with other teachers at the school. The app kept alerting, but would not say which child (if any) was infected or provide any other pertinent information. The alerting became nothing more than an annoyance.
So it was certainly World-Beating. No one else made such a crap system.
Data privacy was extremely high because of Apple/Google policies. They tried to build one that was less private but Apple and Google refused to facilitate it. Saying which child was infected was literally not how Apple and Google designed it to work.
Interestingly test and trace last week got through to 92.6% of contacts. Don't hear so much about the percentages now that they're like that.
Interesting to see now how different countries are setting out their stall for the vaccine rollout.
Macron has set an ambitious target of getting a million vaccines out by 31/1
Boris has set an ambitious target of getting 14 million out by 14/2.
Be interesting to see how or whether those are reached.
I think the blame game is part of the problem. Why would any one think that plan would work, no one has been ok with that level of intrusion. Did people rely to heavily on it being the end all solution to contact tracing? Since we mentioned schools over here when an infection was reported the admin would quarantine those who had contact and alert the rest of the school, without violating privacy or HIPAA. But of course this being florida "contact" meant only those that sat next to the infected for a class period. They ignored hallways, who used the desk the next period and teachers were never considered as a possible contact or spreader. So of course we ended up getting the calls at least once a day between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
No that was never the primary element of contact tracing, so it wasn't the end all solution. The primary element was and always has been manual contact tracing. The app is only meant to be supplementary so eg if you don't know who you've been near as they're a stranger then it pings.
Our daughter's school have taken this very seriously. They have divided the school into year group bubbles and this there is no mingling at all. When I drop the girls off in the morning and pick them up they go in via different entrances, they use different classrooms, they even have different segregated playgrounds now. Everything that can be has been segregated to keep them apart.
We have twice been told that they need to isolate. Once for my youngest in Reception class barely into the school year so she then had to stay off for a fortnight, then for our eldest in Year Two we got the message for her on the first day of the Christmas holidays meaning she needed to self isolate until the 25th ironically - the only thing that affected though was we didn't take her to the shops since we were already not planning on meeting anyone during the holidays.
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